Business Process Modeling (BPM) serves as an abstraction of the way enterprises do business, whereby threads of work are recorded as human comprehensible business process models. When modeling a business process, a modeler usually creates the process manually in a graphical tool. Three common approaches are: creating the business process model from scratch, starting from a reference model, or improving or creating a variant of an existing process model. The outcome is a business process model that reflects a business expert's view.
The business process model may then be implemented by IT experts. For example, the IT experts may map control and data flow of the process model to implement the business process model in an information system. The relationship between the business-level model and its IT-level implementation is oftentimes weak. Consequently, the resulting executable process implementation can deviate substantially from the business process model, and changes on one of the levels may not be easily propagated to the respective other level.
The business process model may change frequently due to internal business requirements such as integration of suppliers and customers, an implementation of new standards, deployment of new application components, and the like or external requirements (e.g., new regulations). The implementation of the changes may involve a significant effort by the IT experts, which may increase the cost of the implementation of the business process model and delay the use of an executable process that is both current and operable.